I was reading the bug codex and it occured to me, they dont really have any viral weapons. Having just been very sick, I got the feeling that the Tyranids could be much more efficient if they could create some virus' that would just kill us all. Sure, they have all those spores and stuff. But those spores dont kill you fast enough.
They need something like Meningacockle (me spell good) or a super flu or something. Since they break everything down to a cellular level, it stands to reason that they could convert some of those cells to Viral-Nids that could kill pretty much anything organic they come into contact with. And considering the speed with which they take planets, a little decompasition of the defenders would be much better than expending all their bug-power.
Also, the virus wouldnt stop evolving. It would be ever-changing just like the Tyranids.
An image which comes to mind is the episode of Itchy and Scratchy where they're taking off the Fantasia theme, and Itchy (the cat I think) chops up Scratchy into peices so fine that when he inhales them, they start hacking his lungs to pieces and he dies from the inside out.
In summary, if they had viral weapons, then they wouldnt need as many bugs to do the fighting for them. They could just concentrate on making "gatherer" Nids for the planets they conquer. Sure, they'd still need warriors and such for the people who somehow escaped the germ warfare, but they wouldnt need as many.
Thoughts people?

Wraithlord

15-07-2005, 07:42

Codex Tyranids appendix:

"They may buy Supervirusbombs for 1000 pts. You win the Game. "

Weapons of Massdestruktion in a tacktikal scale game? Fluffwise yes, but for the game, what about exterminatus? Or thermonuklear warheads?

But then again it would be funny to use a 48"Template of annihilation. :)

As said, fluffwise, they should have viral weapons. Would be easier for them.

Penitent

15-07-2005, 07:45

Alot of the Tyranid fluff mentions stuff like viral weapons. But, if the nids had access to them in game terms, it wouldn't make for very interesting games, now would it ;)

Shas'o'Fior

15-07-2005, 07:59

how do you determine conagibility (sp?) how far does the virus travel each turn, does it travel by wind or by contact?

otherwise, fluffwise accurate

Gavmo

15-07-2005, 08:00

Hmm, perhaps I should have written my post better. :D I ment fluff wise. Though I love the idea of the 48" blast template... :evilgrin:

Hortwerth

15-07-2005, 08:30

Think about it this way: there's nothing cinematic or heroical in fighting virus. Sure there were some bad movies but I mean some action.

Imagine:

officer: Guardsmen, your world has been attacked by the 'Nids! It is your sacred duty to fight them as hard as you can to save what is dearest to you! Have no mercy! Attack!

All guardsmen go to the nearest MASH to fight the nids' virus.

Nazguire

15-07-2005, 09:06

Well Nids do have Spores that decompose and choke their prey, but it is from, what I see a limited fashion.

McMullet

15-07-2005, 10:13

Hmm. That's a good point. The nids have "microphages" in their blood IIRC, which are effectively a form of virus. So they obviously have the ability to produce viruses. Perhaps the problem is that viruses a) tend to mutate rapidly (presumably all the more rapidly in the case of nids, which mutate a lot), and b) are very hard to control or kill. So if the virus went screwy, it would possibly start killing all the nids as well, which could be very bad if it was on a hiveship.

But, generally, I am seeing this as more of a "rule of cool" hole in the fluff. What's the point in nids if they don't run around slaughtering folk?

bratbag

15-07-2005, 10:16

Long ago in tyranid fluff, it was said that ALL viruses are actually the forerunners of the tyranid fleets.

So the answer is, yes they do have viral weapons, they have killed millions (no doubt billions by the 41st millenium), but as humanity has evolved with them present we have developed a natural resistance to them, much like the humans in warhammer have evolved a natural resistance to magic due to the high background magic levels in the warhammer world.

And from a gameplay perspective, no,no,no,no,no let us banish all thoughts of viruses. I remember the old virus bombs/virus outbreaks of second edition. Having 90% of your army wiped out before the first turn for 5 games in a row does bad things to peoples desire to game :cries: .

Nazguire

15-07-2005, 10:24

Long ago in tyranid fluff, it was said that ALL viruses are actually the forerunners of the tyranid fleets.

So the answer is, yes they do have viral weapons, they have killed millions (no doubt billions by the 41st millenium), but as humanity has evolved with them present we have developed a natural resistance to them, much like the humans in warhammer have evolved a natural resistance to magic due to the high background magic levels in the warhammer world.

And from a gameplay perspective, no,no,no,no,no let us banish all thoughts of viruses. I remember the old virus bombs/virus outbreaks of second edition. Having 90% of your army wiped out before the first turn for 5 games in a row does bad things to peoples desire to game :cries: .

Viruses being the forerunner of Tyranid fleets? Oh God, lets keep that in the past. Ridiculous background for a start and it makes no sense logically.

Virus Bombs in 2nd Edition? All I know is that Ork playerss hated them with a passion. Care to elaborate on the mechanics, effects? :D

Sir_Turalyon

15-07-2005, 10:40

Virus kills you by making your cells produce new viruses instead of new cells; essencialy your cells are duplicating and "implementing" viruses DNA instead of your own. Now, Tyranids want to get as much of your DNA as possible intact, while DNA of their own creations are useless to them. Perhaps they don't want to corrupt their samples by using a virus, or to have sort their viruses DNA out from sample?

Hortwerth

15-07-2005, 10:50

Good point, nice idea. DNA harvesting seems much more important to me now.

Randallw

15-07-2005, 10:55

Nids don't need viruses in game, they are all macroviruses, and the imperial guard fighting them are the white blood cells of the Imperium. hey that's a good quote

"The fighting man of the Imperium is the white blood cell in the defence against the tyranid plague" :D

Castigator

15-07-2005, 11:01

Maybe because once the Nids start to rely on Viruses and Bakteria, they'll slowly and surely fall under the Dominion of Nurgle, whose power grows and thrives with every planet that falls to the spectre of disease...... ?

ml2sjw

15-07-2005, 11:45

[QUOTE=Nazguire
Virus Bombs in 2nd Edition? All I know is that Ork playerss hated them with a passion. Care to elaborate on the mechanics, effects? :D[/QUOTE]

its been a long time but i seem to rember, you through the grenade and hit the model under the template, you receive a save depnding on the type of armour your wairing and the breathing gear built in,(orks had no save or it migth have been a 6+ then you place all casulties on their side all models within x inches(really can't remember but more than 2 inches) then also have to test for infection. continue untill no one else can be infected by a casulty. It was messy, very messy agianst marines you killed the odd guy but orks guard and the like you didn't have an army anymore

ALso read the fluf accoridng to the codex their are dozens of types of viruses the tyrandis use to attack a world(bit in the codex about a commissar hacking his lungs up and everyone feeling ill) but its far better that they don't relie on just virus to kill a world

Simon

Bauglir

15-07-2005, 13:13

If 'nids are to have viral weapons, then so should the Imperium! The masters of bio-engineering at the Adeptus Mechanicus could probably do some interesting twists on a otherwise harmless virus and -poof- War of the Worlds all over again.

Or at least some decent nerve gas..! :) The human troops can use gas masks.

McMullet

15-07-2005, 13:15

The Imperium does have biological and chemical weapons. Virus bombs are used for exterminatus, but I believe Nids are too resilient to be affected by them (for the moment).

x-esiv-4c

15-07-2005, 13:16

I'm sure you would see some viral weaponry of the hive-mind manages to assimiliate a plague-marine or something...either that or a very stinky genestealer called Festus or seomthing like that :)

Randallw

15-07-2005, 13:34

spoiler about WoU

Well in WoU they catch a lictor and determine that particular fleets DNA and then kill the norn queen by injecting her with a virus that destroys the hivemind of that fleet. They make a point that they can't do it to all fleets as it is specific to the captured sample

Sai-Lauren

15-07-2005, 13:45

If the nids have them, why not Nurgle?

What's next, followers of Khorne chanting "tactical nuke-outs for the blood god?" Eldar automatically winning because their farseers have navigated all future probabilities and killed the grandparents of the enemy commander at birth? :rolleyes:
RT was bad enough with supersized virus, vortex and simliar support missiles, there's a reason we paint all these models you know, and it's not so they look nice in their carry cases or on shelves.

Anyway, aside from Sir_Turalyon's point about DNA harvesting, the main problem with bio-weapons is that fact that once they're out there, there's an increased risk every day that they'll mutate into something that'll come back and attack you. Maybe even the Nid's couldn't evolve themselves quickly enough to defend against something like that.

Falkus

15-07-2005, 16:34

Why dont the Nids have viral-weapons?

Bioweapons also have a nasty habit of backfiring. And when you're a race that is completely dependant upon biological organisms for every aspect, from war to space travel, a mutated virus infecting your own troops could be very nasty.

swordquest

15-07-2005, 16:47

Nids can get sick too...
That is enough of a reason for the hive mind not to make an uber virus. It already has numerous powerfull tyranic phage cells. Look up bacteriophages in the real world to learn how nasty that stuff can be.I imagine that the nids' have viruses ten times as powerful as ebola, bovine spongiform encefelitis(spelling?), and AIDs.

swordquest

15-07-2005, 16:48

As an aside to my other post, nids' don't have actual viruses because viruses are too small to be alive. ANd nids' deal with living cells, so they can't have viral weapons, just bacteria.

Tim

15-07-2005, 18:14

Actually they can have them, but they would have to be story/scenario driven. If you are running a storyline driven campaign, nid viruses and bacteria clouds could fit in nicely. (preliminary bombardment, or even a scenario goal to capture a nid creature to learn what makes them immune in hopes of finding a cure, etc.) Where mechanics fail, imagination succeeds.

worldshatterer

15-07-2005, 20:08

They have them, just like ALL the other races do . Their usage takes place at the strategic level, against population centres and large concentrations of enemy troops . 40k and Epic are about combat at the tactical level and as such races use of WMD is hardly something that should come up .

To put it another way, imagine you are wargaming the first Iraq War, with some allied forces engaging a few isolated Iraqi tanks. Are the commanders breaking out the tacnukes? no, why- its inapropriate to the level of enagement . 40k is exactly the same .

Add to this a race that harvest the life of entire planets i doubt they want to risk damaging it fundamentally with Viruses . It would be a waste of energy for a race that normally wins by the deploment of overwhelming force .

typhus22

16-07-2005, 15:57

well i thought the nids did have a viral weapon of sorts in the spores they can release. like the heirophant have a spore rules where any model in base to base contact take a wound on 4+ with ar 0. also doesnt the new carnifex have something that effects ws? i mean they arent complete weapons of mass destruction but they do cause a certain amount of "sickness" on the opponent

TheSonOfAbbadon

16-07-2005, 16:05

I think the Heirophant swarm rule is more of a gas than a virus...

Besides, if the Tyranids did engineer a virus that could easily kill pretty much anything then absorb it, then there wouldn't really be a need for Tyranids apart from the virus, so all the Tyranids get reabsorbed to make more virus. So, how does the virus spread to different planets now?